96 WAKE-ROBIN 
down in the heart of the old tree, he should have 
been so alert and watchful as to catch the slightest 
sound from without. 
+ The woodpeckers all build in about the same 
‘manner, excavating the trunk or branch of a de- 
“cayed tree and depositing the eggs on the fine frag- 
ments of wood at the bottom of the cavity. Though 
the nest is not especially an artistic work, — requir- 
ing strength rather than skill, —yet the eggs and 
the young of few other birds are so completely 
housed from the elements, or protected from their 
natural enemies, the jays, crows, hawks, and owls. 
A tree with a natural cavity is never selected, but 
one which has been dead just long enough to have 
become soft and brittle throughout. The bird goes 
in horizontally for a few inches, making a hole per- 
fectly round and smooth and adapted to his size, 
then turns downward, gradually enlarging the hole, 
as he proceeds, to the depth of ten, fifteen, twenty 
inches, according to the softness of the tree and the 
urgency of the mother bird to deposit her eggs. 
While excavating, male and female work alternately. 
After one has been engaged fifteen or twenty min- 
utes, drilling and carrying out chips, it ascends to 
an upper limb, utters a loud call or two, when its 
mate soon appears, and, alighting near it on the 
branch, the pair chatter and caress a moment, then 
the fresh one enters the cavity and the other flies 
away. 
A few days since I climbed up to the nest of the 
downy woodpecker, in the decayed top of a sugar 
